The KEY
Timothy E. Hicks
Copyright 2005 by Tim Hicks
Smashwords Edition
Sept. 13, 2005
The Key.
About three years ago, I found myself out of work and so when a friend of mine from church told me he needed help running leads and doing estimates for his re-modeling contracting business, of course I said yes.
I had been praying and believing that God was going to supply me with an income to meet my needs. With my background in custom home design and drafting house plans, this seemed like an answer to prayer and the perfect marriage between experience and opportunity. So with great excitement, I began making calls to potential customers.
After three or four weeks, I started to question whether or not this was such a good idea. It wasn’t as easy to get a signed contract as I had thought it would be and since I was on straight commission, paid only with a contract, after the forth week I really began to doubt that it was God who had led me to try my hand at this type of work.
Even though my mind had begun to doubt, it was my confidence in Gods Word and my faith that He would provide which kept me going. After all, His word for me was….”Do not grow weary in well doing for in due season you will reap if you faint not.” So, I just kept making the calls and believing. What I began to notice is that with every rejection I got, my faith just kept getting stronger and on the day when God finally moved on my behalf, He did so in a way that forever changed my view of adversity.
I awoke that morning and went through my usual routine. I spent some time in prayer, wrote my love letter to the Lord and spent some time reading my Bible. But I did something different that morning. I verbally and boldly began to proclaim that this was the day that God had made. I was going to rejoice and be glad in it. It was the day that I decided to claim the Blessings of Abraham just like Pastor Hayes had been teaching and so I got dressed up in my very best suit. It wasn’t very hard to choose which suit to put on since I only owned one. A decision I later regretted because the van I drove had an A/C that decided it didn’t want to cooperate. I think the forecast was calling for the hottest day of the year.
The first call came and went. No sale. The second, third and forth calls all had the same results and now it’s getting late in the day with only one more call to make. I found myself in a town I’d never been to. On a street I’d never been on, talking to a man I’d never met before about remodeling his upstairs bathroom. It was close to 6pm and his wife had already started cooking dinner. I remember it was spaghetti. Just before getting to the house I stopped for a burger. As I was eating it I began to speak Gods word over this call. My money was gone, the van was running on fumes and I knew that unless God came to my rescue, I would not be able to work the next day.
After about 30 minutes with the customer he looked at me and said the only words I wanted to hear. “Okay, Tim, let’s go ahead and do it. Let me sign the contract so you can leave. It’s late and dinner is about ready. I was so excited that I ran to the van for a contract but to my horror, I realized that I had locked and the only key I had was still in the ignition. I could see the contract laying on the seat next to my half eaten hamburger But there was no way to get it out for him to sign.
After a few minute the man came outside to see what was taking me so long and after seeing my dilemma we spent about 30 minutes trying to break into the van. We tried everything from coat hangers to screw drivers to even a “slim-Jim” which was made for unlocking cars. Nothing we did was working and I could tell he was beginning to get frustrated. I thought he was going to back out of the deal and all I could see was my $600 commission flying out the window.
Just about that time his neighbor came out to see what we were doing and to offer his help. My customer went inside to eat his already cold dinner and the neighbor did his best to unlock the door to my van. I called the company; Triple-A and they said that it would be close to 3 or 4 hours before they could send a locksmith. Apparently because I wasn’t stranded on the side of the highway, they didn’t consider my situation an emergency. I had a few things to say about that but since I had been claiming Gods blessings all day long I felt I had better just keep my mouth shut. A wise choice considering what happened next.
I did the only thing I knew to do and I leaned my head on the van and in a quiet whisper, simply said, “Dear Heavenly Father, I need some help. I don’t know what else to do. Won’t you please help me?”
Without warning, the man next door stopped working on the van, turned and without a word, walked back into his house and closed the door. I had never felt so alone and totally helpless as I did at that moment, a stranger in a strange land without any food or water and without a key to my only way back home. A few minutes later the man came back out to the van and proceeded to tell me a story of how he had never owned a van, and had sold his, last vehicle 5 or 6 years ago. I’m thinking to myself, “ I don’t want to hear this. Why was he telling me this story?” It had nothing to do with my current situation. But then something happened that forever changed me. He said that 3 years ago he was re-arranging his furniture in the living room and as he moved the sofa he found an old key on the floor but didn’t remember ever loosing one, and could not recall which car it went to since he had had many cars over the years. When he found the key, h said, “I knew I didn’t need it and so I went to the trash can to throw it away.” But he said” I could not make myself let it go so I put it in the junk drawer in the kitchen where it’s been for the last 3 years.” He said, “ I don’t know why but a few minutes ago when I was out here, I thought about this key for the first time since I found it.” He said “today at work I just felt like I wanted to leave early and come home. Had this been any other day I would not even be here now.
He took this key and preceded to put it in the locked door of the van and without so much as a jiggle of the key, his hand turned and the lock popped up and he opened the door. My customer come out just as the door opened and they both looked at me with eyes as big as plates. The look on their faces said it all. At the instant this locked popped up, something leaped up in my spirit for I knew that what I had just witnessed was nothing short of an absolute miracle. The two men began to immediately try to rationalize and explain away what had just happened, but I KNEW!
I took the key, got in my van and just as easy as it unlocked the door, with the very same key, I started the van. With a shout of triumph and praises unto God, I grabbed a contract, looked at my customer and with a smile just said “sign right here, please.”
What I realized as I drove away was that even before the foundations of the earth was laid, God knew! He looked down through the corridor of time and saw my situation; He knew that I was going to do something stupid but that in faith, believing, I would cry out to Him for help, so that at just the perfect time, He would provide that answer. What is so amazing is that He had already provided the answer even 3 years before I needed it.
Yes! He provided me with a key to my van but I know that He didn’t do it just for a blessing to me. He has a much bigger plan and that is to share with others and to tell others that God wants to give them not only the keys to answer every situation they will ever face but even more than that, He longs to give them the very keys to His heart.
To this day, I still carry that key as a monument and a reminder of the goodness of God and as a way of telling all who will listen and believe that God wants to give them their own special key to His heart.